Feed: The Newsflesh Trilogy, Book 1

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.

Parasite

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease. We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the tapeworm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them. But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives... and will do anything to get them.

Every Heart a Doorway

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions - slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere...else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The things she's experienced...they change a person. The children under Miss West's care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel, Book 1

The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and humanity from them. Meet Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan to pursue her dream career in professional ballroom dance. That is, until talking mice, telepathic mathematicians, and a tangle with the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George, get in her way.

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day

When her sister Patty died, Jenna blamed herself. When Jenna died, she blamed herself for that, too. Unfortunately Jenna died too soon. Living or dead, every soul is promised a certain amount of time, and when Jenna passed she found a heavy debt of time in her record. Unwilling to simply steal that time from the living, Jenna earns every day she leeches with volunteer work at a suicide prevention hotline.

Indexing

For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected - perhaps infected is a better word - by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results.

Green Fields: Incubation

All Dr. Brianna Lewis wants is a cup of coffee. Coffee to make slaving away in her cell culture lab at Green Fields Biotech a little more bearable on a Friday afternoon when everyone is home already. What she doesn't count on is a group of terrorists blowing up all the entrances to the building and taking her and a select few others hostage. Bree soon finds herself conflicted. Not only does she know their charismatic leader, she also starts to suspect that there is a lot more to this than the hunt for an illegal bioweapon....

Indian Hill

Indian Hill is about an ordinary boy who grows up in relatively normal times but who finds himself thrust into an extraordinary position. Growing up in suburban Boston, Michael enjoys the trials and tribulations that all adolescents go through, from the seemingly tyrannical mother, to girl problems, to run-ins with the law. From there he escapes to college out in Colorado with his best friend, Paul, where they begin to forge new relationships with those around them. It is one girl in particular that has caught Michael's eye, and he alternately pines for her and laments ever meeting her.

Rosemary and Rue: An October Daye Novel, Book 1

The world of Faerie never disappeared: it merely went into hiding, continuing to exist parallel to our own. Secrecy is the key to Faerie’s survival—but no secret can be kept forever, and when the fae and mortal worlds collide, changelings are born. Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, these second-class children of Faerie spend their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations.

Monster Hunter International

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

Ink and Bone: The Great Library

Ruthless and supremely powerful, the Great Library is now a presence in every major city, governing the flow of knowledge to the masses. Alchemy allows the library to deliver the content of the greatest works of history instantly - but the personal ownership of books is expressly forbidden. Jess Brightwell believes in the value of the library, but the majority of his knowledge comes from illegal books obtained by his family, who are involved in the thriving black market.

Zombie Fallout: Zero

Those who would seek a new world order have unleashed the most devastating virus onto mankind, and even they do not know the secrets hidden in their weapon. Follow along as Harry, a CDC scientist, races to figure out what exactly the virus is and how to stop it. It will be up to him and a group of marines led by Major Sanders to stop the zombie fallout before it ravages an unsuspecting world.

Zombie Rush: Books 1 and 2

New to the Hot Springs PD, Lisa Reynolds was not all that welcomed by her coworkers, especially those who were passed over for the position. But it didn't matter anymore. Her 30-day probation period ended on the same day of the Z-poc's arrival. Overnight the world goes from bad to worse as thousands die in the initial onslaught. National Guard and regular military units deployed the day before to the north leave the city in mayhem. All directions lead to death until one unlikely candidate steps forward with a plan.

Zombie Road II: Bloodbath on the Blacktop

The people that tried to kill the world almost succeeded. They were fiendishly clever but they didn't take into account the vets, the truckers, and the two-fisted fighters who didn't know how to give up. Gunny and his band of survivors continue their journey along the Zombie Road, saving as many as they can along the way. They power through the undead hordes with their modified semi-trucks to beat the ticking clock of nuclear meltdowns.

The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1

This is the way the world ends. For the last time. A season of endings has begun. It starts with the great, red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal and long-dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Sparrow Hill Road: Ghost Stories, Book 1

Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross - a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn't ask Rose what she thought of the idea. It's been more than sixty years since that night, and she's still sixteen, and she's still running. It's been more than sixty years since that night, and she's still sixteen, and she's still running.

The First Days: As the World Dies, Book 1

The morning that the world ends, Katie is getting ready for court and housewife Jenni is taking care of her family. Less than two hours later, they are fleeing for their lives from a zombie horde. Thrown together by circumstance, Jenni and Katie become a powerful zombie-killing partnership, mowing down zombies as they rescue Jenni's stepson, Jason, from an infected campground.

Publisher's Summary

"Rise up while you can." (Georgia Mason)

The year was 2014. It was the year we cured cancer, the year we cured the common cold, and the year the dead started to walk. It was the year of the Rising.

The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. They uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made.

Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies - and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this:

Things can always get worse.

Blackout is the conclusion to the epic trilogy that began in the Hugo-nominated Feed and the sequel, Deadline.

Okay, I actually saw that coming, but I'm still kinda surprised she actually went there.

So, if you have read the first two books in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, you know that Georgia Mason died at the end of book one, and was brought back to life (as a clone) at the end of book two.

I'm not a big fan of "cheats" like this. Throughout the second book, Grant coped with having killed off one of her main characters in the first book by making Shaun "crazy," so Georgia becomes a permanent presence in his head, thus allowing the living main character to have conversations with his dead sister.

This continues in book three, even past the point where Shaun finally finds out about the cloned Georgia. I was expecting there to be some additional sort of "twist" to explain how the Georgia in Shaun's head could be telling him things Shaun didn't himself actually know. But nope, it was just crazy.

The Newsflesh trilogy, supposedly a zombie post-apocalypse series, aspires to be a political allegory as well. The "real" story is that in the wake of the unleashing of the Kellis-Amberlee virus, which causes the newly-dead to rise up again as viral-animated cannibalistic infection vectors, American society has responded to this terrifying change in the status quo by accepting a "new normal" that includes blood tests at every door, elevator, and vehicle, shoot-to-kill orders, safety protocols that make walking out in the open or doing pretty much anything but huddling within fortified enclaves unthinkable, and of course, listening to a government-coopted news media lie about everything.

Sound like Mira Grant might have an agenda here?

The point is pressed home hard in the concluding volume, in which Shaun and George and their surviving newsies find themselves on the run, working with mad scientists and crazy hackers with crazier gun moll sidekicks, swearing to unleash vengeance and The Truth. And they also kill a zombie bear. A ZOMBIE GRIZZLY BEAR!

Like the first two books, it's fast-paced adventure from start to finish. Whenever things start to get slow, you can bet something is about to get blown up or another horde of zombies will come moaning around the corner.

The Center for Disease Control, already revealed to be a little shady in the previous book, turn out to be an Evil Government Conspiracy that is literally holding the President hostage. And there are some new revelations about the Kellis-Amberlee virus, and of course, there is the whole cloning bit, where they managed to clone Georgia and perform a memory transfer from dead Georgia's brain, so that the clone is kinda sorta the real Georgia, at least real enough to convince Shaun.

Which is where things get really creepy, because you know how I commented in my review of the last book that these two are... disturbingly close, and it's kind of weird that neither of them seemed to have an actual love interest?

Yeah, the author went there.

I cannot say I was shocked or surprised, but between Shaun being a constant jerk even before Georgia died, and an even worse jerk after, and then when clone Georgia comes back, he is, as Becks points out so succinctly, "an incestuous necrophiliac"... this was sure a creepy twist to throw in the finale.

Mira Grant's writing is clever and full of banter, but sometimes the forced "punchiness" of it (like we are constantly being reminded how Irwins, in the face of imminent death, cope by making wisecracks) became wearying.

I also hesitated to label this series "YA" before, but there were too many points in Blackout where I felt talked down to by the author spelling things out through unnecessary dialog. For example, upon being told that they will not be allowed to continue without passing a checkpoint, Shaun asks: "And if we don't pass the checkpoint tests?"

Gee, what do you think? Three entire books have been spent hammering the point home. This is not even a question anybody living in this world would ask. Everyone knows what the "safety protocols" are in the post-Rising world.

Grant also gets a bit heavy-handed with some of the emails and blog entries that begin each chapter. Like: "Shaun is alive. Repeat, Shaun is alive!" Repeated in an email. Now, think about it. If you are telling somebody something really important in an email, you might underline it or use boldface or something, and you might say "Repeat: blah blah blah" once for dramatic emphasis. But you probably don't repeat it at the start and end like you are sending it out via radio broadcast on an uncertain transmission.

I know, small details. But they annoyed me.

For all that, I enjoyed the story and this was a pretty solid conclusion to the trilogy. Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire is not about to become my favorite author: this series was pretty much brain candy. But it's tasty brain candy, even if you aren't normally into zombie novels. I am docking book three a bit for the juvenile flourishes, so 3.5 stars, rounded to 4 because I liked the series as a whole.

Would you be willing to try another book from Mira Grant? Why or why not?

Yes I would, provided the synopsis was something that I was interested in. I enjoyed most of this series, just thought the last half of the last book fell kinda flat.

What does Paula Christensen and Michael Goldstrom bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the 2 narrators! Lent a little more drama to it, which was needed by the end.

Could you see Blackout being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Yes, I would like seeing it made into a TV series, starring Jane Levy and Aaron Paul.

Any additional comments?

I snapped this book up as soon as I knew it was out, and I was not disappointed with the first half of the book! The last half dissolved into a watered-down conspiracy theory mess, with a heretofore unknown gov't agency riding is as the Cavalry.<br/><br/>Overall excellent series. I just wish the author had made the ending as striking as everything leading up to it.

I like Jack Reacher style characters regardless of setting. Put them in outer space, in modern America, in a military setting, on an alien planet... no worries. Book has non moralistic vigilante-justice? Sign me up!
(oh, I read urban fantasy, soft and hard sci-fi, trashy vampire and zombie novels too)

Wow. Conspiracy anyone? About 3/4 of this book is even better than the middle book, which was about twice as good as the first book! The only thing I like better than a well-written conspiracy theory is a well-written conspiracy theory that involves zombies! Or medical interventions that 'accidentally' end up creating zombies anyway...

Was it as excellent as it could have been? Not quite... there was just a bit too much "coverage" of Shawn's insanity. I think there must have been a couple dozen mentions of how crazy he was and how one didn't recover from insanity in a day. Then at the end, the insanity just disappears, or, at least, it just stops being mentioned. The wrap-up is quite hasty as well... considering we had 3 books to get us here, it was all said and done in only a chapter or two.

It also had a bit more feel of a journal-style book than the earlier ones, and we see the same event/time period through the eyes of more than one character via these journal-like entries. It caused the suspense level to suffer a bit, but, otherwise, it was a nice way to see what was going on in other people's heads.

Overall it was a believable (and yet, thankfully, still far-fetched) and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Do you have to suspend disbelief? Duh, of course, it's a zombie novel... but it's quite a bit more thoughtful (conspiratorial) than the typical hack 'n slash. The narration is fine, but I preferred the male narrator of book two.

I think I just let too much time elapse between Book 2 and 3, so I could not remember the particulars of the overall plot. I was missing many crucial details in order to properly follow the story, and quite frankly – I just didn’t care.

Because of my lack of interest, my understanding of how everything was interconnected was lacking and I have to admit that I wasn’t really trying to keep up either. At times, it felt as if was reading 6 different books (none of which I really liked) and I just became more confused as the book went along.

Absolutely. In fact, the entire Newsflesh trilogy is on my "listen again" list as soon as I'm done processing everything that happened.

What did you like best about this story?

Georgia! Georgia, and how smart she is, and how she deals with who and what she is.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Paula Christensen back as the female narrator was fantastic. I love how she gives life to George...her voice just sounds right for the character. On the other hand, I have NO idea of why we have a third male narrator in as many books. The male narrator for Deadline was perfect! While I think I might enjoy Michael Goldstrom narrating something different, where he isn't narrating from inside the head of a damaged twentysomething, his voice is WAY too old to carry Shaun's narration believably. <br/><br/>Especially given the younger male voices we've already heard for him. So it was half perfect, half entirely wrong.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I cried. A few times. The reunion scene, for one. Becks...yeah, cried there.

The author just stretches my suspension of disbelief (i.e. verisimilitude) to ridiculous proportion with the concept of cloning. To get me to buy it takes a lot more than having a "metal snapshot" of a brain. It IS a fascinating idea but it doesn't really go anywhere except to add a lot of self doubt to a character. The author continues to do a really sketchy job creating settings and bullets will come out of nowhere but what the room looks like in which that could happen is often poorly (or not at all) described. The narrator for the main woman in the story sounds great and unchanged. They changed the male narrator (at least he sounded much different) and most of the time he is fine but not is as consistently in his very cynical and harsh character as in the second book.

I think this series has been my favorite in the zombie genre overall, and this is a good solid ending to the series. The plot line resolution with the parents was well done, and a lot of the loose ends tied up. I didn't think this one felt as fresh, as fast, or as hip as the earlier two in the series but it was still a good read.

I love this book, it's the third in a series...my only complain was they changed the male narrator and he just took me out of the story. :( His voice wasn't unpleasant, it just wasn't right for this character I don't think. The female was great!